Iran International
Celebration and stunned disbelief swept across parts of Iran on Saturday evening after US and Israeli officials announced that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had been killed.
Across social media and in accounts from residents inside Iran, the news triggered an eruption of emotion—joy, shock and disbelief in equal measure.
One user wrote on X: “I’m crying, laughing, screaming and experiencing every feeling in the world in three seconds.”
According to sources in Tehran who were still able to communicate with the outside world through Starlink satellite internet, residents leaned out of windows or gathered on rooftops soon after the announcement, shouting in celebration.
Farzad, a Tehran resident, said the sound of whistling and honking motorcycles and cars quickly filled the air. “It just erupted all at once,” he said.
Despite severe internet disruptions, videos appearing to show people dancing and celebrating circulated online from cities including Karaj, Qazvin, Shiraz, Kermanshah, Isfahan and Sanandaj.
State media coverage appeared largely unchanged for hours after the reports. It was only in the early hours of Sunday that state television confirmed the news, declaring 40 days of national mourning and a week-long public holiday.
Meanwhile Iranian forces continued missile and drone attacks on Israel and other regional countries, including the United Arab Emirates.
Prince Reza Pahlavi addressed Iranians in a message saying that with Khamenei’s death the Islamic Republic had effectively reached its end and would soon be consigned to “the dustbin of history.”
“Any attempt by the remnants of the regime to appoint a successor to Khamenei is doomed to fail from the outset,” he said. “Whoever they place in his stead will have neither legitimacy nor longevity.”
Iranian authorities are expected to convene the 88 clerical members of the Assembly of Experts—some of whom may currently be outside Tehran—to determine a successor, though doing so could prove difficult under wartime conditions.
Across social media, many diaspora users and some Iranians with internet access described Khamenei as the killer of their dreams and loved ones.
One user posted a video appearing to show young people dancing in the streets of Abdanan, in Fars province—a city where protesters were killed in large numbers less than two months ago.
“You riddled the people of Abdanan with bullets, but today it’s the people of Abdanan dancing on your corpse, criminal Khamenei,” the user wrote.
Others expressed disbelief and demanded proof.
“Khamenei’s death feels so surreal to me that I won’t believe it until I see his body,” one user wrote.
Some said they regretted that he may have died too quickly to answer for decades of repression.
Yet even amid celebration, grief lingered for lives lost under the Islamic Republic.
“If the news is true, how did everything end so suddenly, as if he never existed?” one user posted on X. “Regret for the dear lives lost, regret for years wasted in prisons, regret for lives destroyed.”
Tehran’s unveiling of a towering statue depicting the Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling before pre-Islamic Persian King Shapur I has renewed criticism of the Islamic Republic’s appeal to nationalist sentiment following the June war with Israel.
For over forty years, the theocracy purged ancient Persian history from schoolbooks, replacing it with post-Islamic narratives. But after the 12-day conflict with Israel, officials have turned to the distant pre-Islamic past to rally a divided society.
From murals of ancient kings and soldiers to patriotic songs added to Shi’ite mourning ceremonies performed before Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Tehran now embraces imagery once deemed heretical by its own revolutionary ethos.
'Kneel before Iran' campaign
Tehran’s Revolution (Enghelab) Square was the scene of an unusual spectacle on Friday as officials unveiled a massive bronze statue depicting Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling in submission before Sassanid King Shapur I, commemorating Iran’s victory at the Battle of Edessa (260 AD).
The event was held under the slogan “Kneel before Iran,” part of what authorities describe as a campaign to project “national unity and historical pride” following the June war with Israel.
Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, a staunch ultraconservative, said on X: “Enmity with Great Iran can only end in kneeling before this historic nation.”
Municipal official Davood Goodarzi said the installation would be accompanied by visual displays depicting “other victories of Iranians over foreign aggressors,” including the defeat of British forces by local commander Rais-Ali Delvari, Mirza Kuchak Khan’s resistance against Russian troops, and Surena’s triumph over Rome at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE.
The goal, Goodarzi said, is “strengthening concepts such as national dignity, social unity, and Iranian identity.”
The statue, he said, would remain temporarily at Revolution Square before being moved to a city gateway “where it will stand as the first emblem of Iran before diplomats and foreign visitors.”
Unveiled women were allowed to attend the unveiling ceremony—an uncommon scene at events organized by Tehran’s ultra-hardline municipality.
The turn to the pre-Islamic past
The sharp reversal also recalls remarks once made by Khamenei. In a 2011 speech, he asserted that “all the great military victories of this nation came after Islam,” dismissing pre-Islamic accounts as “things that are not documented.”
In 1987, he had said that prophets triumphed over kings such as Cyrus and that “nothing remains of these monarchs in history but names remembered with derision.”
Nevertheless, pro-government social media accounts have now gone so far as to circulate posters equating Khamenei himself with Shapur, showing him standing with a staff as Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump kneel before him. The caption reads: “You will kneel before Iran.”
'Hypocrisy'
Pro-government figures have hailed the move as a patriotic success. Conservative political reporter Hossein Saremi posted: “Today’s grand Iranian gathering showed that people and the state share one essence: Iran itself. Nothing can take our homeland away.”
Others, however, called the spectacle “hypocrisy.” Journalist Gholamhossein Pashaei wrote on X: “Every year you close Pasargadae to stop people from celebrating Cyrus Day, yet you unveil Shapur’s statue in Enghelab Square with drums and fireworks during Fatimiyya (mourning period)!”
Dissident commentator Hamid Asafi called the ceremony “a perfect snapshot of the Islamic Republic’s contradictions.”
On Telegram he wrote: “A week ago they closed Cyrus’s tomb out of fear of the crowds, and now they glorify Shapur in the same breath. The Islamic Republic fears living history but poses for selfies with its corpse.”
He added: “They know people no longer respond to rosaries and sermons. That’s why they’ve brought history back to the stage—in a controlled costume. If they can’t erase the past, they’ll try to own it.”
The irony deepened as UNESCO formally recognized Cyrus’s Charter as one of the earliest human-rights documents.
President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X: “Iran, the cradle of dialogue, justice, and coexistence, can still inspire peace today.”
Users swiftly replied, questioning how such pride could coexist with a government that blocks access to Cyrus’s tomb each year to those wishing to visit it on his birthday.